An outgrowth of landmark Civil Rights-era legislation is that every taxpayer helps those in need to pay rent. The drive for subsidized housing first took shape in the form of massive public housing projects, but the social failure of big-city projects gave way in subsequent years to direct housing subsidies to individuals.

Section 8 vouchers, by the time of their adoption in the 1980s, were designed to help people find better opportunities in neighborhoods, schools and more integrated settings. Under the voucher program, the federal government pays a city's fair market rent level minus about 28 percent of a qualifying tenant's income. The money funnels through local housing authorities directly to landlords accepting voucher-holders as tenants. Yet the results of the effort have been mixed.

Last year The Oregonian found that Portland-area holders of Section 8 vouchers, many of them minorities, were effectively locked out of high-demand neighborhoods in inner Northeast and inner Southeast Portland and instead spread across lower-demand neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue on the city's east side. The result was a perpetuation of the ghetto, if not in a brick-and-mortar project then in lower-income, sometimes ethnically aligned, areas of greater Portland. Housing choice was, and in this tight rental market remains, limited.

Home Forward, Multnomah County's housing authority, went so far last year as to selectively adjust a voucher-holder's monthly rent stipend upward -- in some places more than $100 in desirable inner Northeast and Southeast neighborhoods. But recent tracking in those neighborhoods shows the effort to have opened no more doors to Section 8 voucher-holders.

Part of the reason is surely the tight market. But part of the reason, too, is that Oregon landlords, accountable under antidiscrimination provisions of fair housing laws, are free to decline applications from Section 8 voucher holders, of whom there are more than 8,000 in Portland alone. Congress, while sweeping in its declarations that housing choice should be free of impediments, made clear that participation in the rent-subsidy program by landlords would be voluntary.

Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, along with Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, would like that to change. Kotek worked for months last year in engaging both landlords and housing advocates to find a way to expand housing choice and to require that Oregon landlords consider the applications of those holding Section 8 vouchers. The idea is to keep the source of a prospective tenant's income out of the equation -- and in so doing prevent discrimination.

The result is House Bill 2639. It would not require that any landlord rent to a voucher-holder, only that the landlord consider the voucher holder's application. This seems quite reasonable, because it levels the field. And because fair is fair, the landlord could then apply to voucher-holders the same screening criteria he or she applies to any prospective tenant -- income, credit and tenancy histories all factoring in.

But that's where the fairness ends and House Bill 2639 falls short. Acceptance of the Section 8 tenant carries with it government engagement that, especially for landlords with just a few units, could prove costly.

Federal law requires that any apartment to be rented to a voucher-holder undergo inspection, which in Portland typically takes between four and seven days. If improvements are required to bring the unit to marketplace standards, the landlord then has 10 days to make repairs, with reinspection to occur within five more business days. The collective period of time in which the apartment could be held off the market is lost money to the landlord, who may operate on a slim margin and who might have otherwise seen rent from a non-subsidized tenant.

Eviction proceedings against a voucher-holder trigger a complex process. And a provision in the bill designed to allay landlord concerns about property damage only promises complexity, and potentially more costs, to landlords. A mitigation fund, to be subsidized in part by legislative appropriation, would repair damages to a landlord's property wrought by a Section 8 tenant -- but only after the landlord takes the time to win a judgment in the small claims department of a circuit court, and only if the damages exceed $500 but do not cost more than twice the monthly rent.

Discrimination, whether based on gender or race or disability or family size, works against everyone. It hurts our community, our state and our nation. But asking landlords to pick up extra costs associated with voucher-holding tenants is on its face discriminatory. It potentially charges landlords for laws just about everyone supports through taxes and, most critically, their hearts.

Speaker Kotek and Commissioner Fish are right to seek a level field for all people who seek shelter and have money to pay for it. But this bill misses the mark in potentially punishing those who can, under other circumstances, help the most.